Lefkada - August/September 2022

[Stu]

Thought I would finally post up a little piece about our recent trip to Lefkada. We had a wonderful break, but unfortunately I picked up some form of virus two days from the end and have been feeling rough ever since ☹️, just having antibiotics for a chest infection and slowly starting to feel a bit more human.

Enough about me, back to the trip. I planned to take my FC76DCU and ScopeTech Zero mount with a basic set of eyepieces, diagonal and a Herschel Wedge, and this all fitted nicely into the ThinkTank Airport Accelerator case. This was technically a couple of centimetres too deep for TUI’s carry on limits, but I strapped it tightly to reduce the height and in the end they did not even look at the hand baggage so it was no problem at all.

We were at the North end of the island, about 5 minutes walk from the coast and in the more light polluted area so I wasn’t necessarily expecting too much, but hoped for one short trip somewhere a little darker.

As it turned out, I got most use out of the scope for solar observing. I used the Leica Zoom directly attached to the CoolWedge (I’ve adapted it to be able to do this), and this gave me an ideal range of magnifications for the conditions. I occasionally tried the Nag zoom but it was only useful once or twice.

For probably eight or nine days in all, I popped out in the early morning and evenings to have a a ten or fifteen minute session. The seeing was generally quite good then and there was some good activity to view.

Not having an observing chair with me, and also having some nice comfy grass to sit on, I opted to have the tripod right down low, spread out wider than normal to put the eyepiece at a comfortable height; it was very stable and worked well.

Despite only having a small room between the three of us, I found a little space for the scope to stay assembled and out of the way which made life easier. Mrs Stu didn’t complain at all, except when she kept wrapping the cord from her hair dryer around it 😜.

I find the 76mm a bit more limited on the detail it shows, particularly for granulation but still I could see plenty enough to be rewarding, including lovely striations in the penumbra of the larger ARs.

I made some reports of the early sessions in this thread here:

I had a good session on Jupiter and Mars in the hours before and just after dawn, reported here to save me repeating it all.

Deep sky was a bit of a washout really. I drove out around the lagoon to the last of five old windmills and setup in its shadow as best I could. It was reasonably dark, but there were car headlights coming past frequently which made dark adaptation tricky. I did see a few things, including the Eastern Veil but decided not to turn it into a long session. Being frank, I felt a little spooked and uncomfortable out there so that made concentrating on observing difficult 🐔🐔😜. Had we been down in the South I think it would have been a different story.

Outside that, we saw beautiful sunsets most nights, and also the crescent Moon became a welcome sight towards the end of the holiday. Unfortunately it was blocked by the hill behind our apartment so not easy to get a scope on.

In hindsight I would have taken my Binoviewers and left out the two Morpheus’ which didn’t get much use, but that aside, the kit worked well and I’m glad I took it.

One last thing. Early on in the holiday, I managed to jump into the pool with my iPhone 11Pro in my shorts pocket. Someone saw it on the bottom quite quickly and gave it back to me, but despite a week drying out in the sun and in a bag of rice it still failed when I tried to turn it on. So, despite what Apple say, they are NOT waterproof!

I had taken a backup iPhone 5 incase of such stupidity but the camera on it is so much poorer than the 11Pro it meant I didn’t take as many solar shots as I would have liked which is a shame. Another claim on the insurance as I did something similar back in April!!! 😜😜

EDIT

Thought it might be useful to add a kit list for reference:

FC-76DCU with Feathertouch FTF2025BCR LW focuser (A20-302 adaptor)

More Blue 80mm rings and dovetail

Scopetech Zero mount

Gitzo GT5542LS tripod

BBHS T2 diagonal

Baader CoolWedge

9x50 finder

RDF

24mm Panoptic

8.9 to 17.8mm Leica ASPH Zoom

17.5mm Morpheus

12.5mm Morpheus

3 to 6mm Nag Zoom

Lumicon OIII and UHC filters

A 2” and 1.25” Clicklock plus various extensions just in case.

ThinkTank Airport Accelerator case

[JeremyS]

Great report Stu.

Relieved to hear Mrs Stu’s hairdryer chord didn’t cause any harm 👍🏻

Edited September 17, 2022 by JeremyS

[Stu]

2 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Great report Stu.

Relieved to hear Mrs Stu’s hairdryer chord didn’t cause any harm 👍🏻

Indeed, there were one or two tangles, the most treacherous of which also included the hair straighteners 😱. Fortunately I was able to intervene each time before any impatient tugging occurred!

[Kon]

Excellent report and that's dedication to bring your telescope to the holiday. I should invest on a travel setup.

[RobertI]

Nice report Stu, lovely pics too. I love the shot of the tripod flat on the ground - it looks like it’s having a little rest! 

[Stu]

24 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Nice report Stu, lovely pics too. I love the shot of the tripod flat on the ground - it looks like it’s having a little rest! 

Thanks Robert. I know it might look a little (lot!) crazy, but with the sun down low, and sitting on the grass it worked really well. Very stable too 😂.

Just to note that I’ve added a kit list to the original thread for reference.

[Stu]

4 hours ago, Kon said:

Excellent report and that's dedication to bring your telescope to the holiday. I should invest on a travel setup.

Thank you 😊. I often find it worthwhile taking a small scope away with me. It keeps me occupied and provided it fits around (and never gets in the way of) proper family time it doesn’t cause any issues.

[Ags]

A telescope always accompanies me on holiday. My portable setup includes: ZS66, AZ-GTi, AZT6, RACI, 20/12/6 mm eyepieces, ZWO camera, laptop, power pack, Artcise tripod. On the last trip I did however forget the USB cable for the camera!

[Stu]

24 minutes ago, Ags said:

A telescope always accompanies me on holiday. My portable setup includes: ZS66, AZ-GTi, AZT6, RACI, 20/12/6 mm eyepieces, ZWO camera, laptop, power pack, Artcise tripod. On the last trip I did however forget the USB cable for the camera!

Great setup Ags, covers alot of options. I used to have a WO SD66 and really enjoyed it. Such lovely compact yet capable scopes. I still miss mine in many ways.

It’s interesting to look back and see what my first proper travel kit was 10 years ago! It worked very well, although a decent lightweight Alt Az mount would have been better than the photo tripod and mount.